Recent WTO rulings against our Dolphin-safe tuna, and Meat Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) illustrate the dangers corporate-designed free trade agreements impose on our democratic processes—threatening our ability to pass laws that inform and protect consumers, animals, the environment, and many other vital public interest policies.Having an understanding of the threats corporate globalization poses to public regulations is critical in the fight against the coming corporate deals, TPP, TTIP, and TiSA. We must continue to resist the WTO, which is why our call this Sunday, January 17, part of our Globalization 101 series, focuses on WTO history, rulings, and ongoing cases like the Tuna Ruling, COOl, and the Indian Solar campaign.

Our featured guest speaker is Deborah James, Director of International Programs, for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Deborah James has over fifteen years of expertise working on issues of trade and democratic global governance. At CEPR, her work focuses on the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and US policy towards Latin America.Her presentation will cover a lot of ground and hopefully clear up many grey areas around the WTO, IMF, Free Trade, and corporate globalization.If you are as interested in learning how we got to the point where corporations rule the world, and what we can do about it, this will be a call you won’t want to miss!

Deborah's presentation will include:

A brief overview of the history, objectives, mechanics, and resistance to the WTO

An introduction to The “Our World is not for Sale” (OWINFS) network, a loose grouping of organizations, activists and social movements worldwide fighting the current model of corporate globalization embodied in global trading system; and

Guidance on what activists can do to fight the WTO

We will also hear from activists from Chile and Peru as they report on protests against the TPP in their countries, and ideas for solidarity actions here in the US;

Liz Warren, will pay a special guest visit to the call to talk about her collaboration with AFL-CIO on a new Globalization 101 Module

Dr. Margaret Flowers and others on the call will report on the Post State of the Union Media Mobilizers-fact-checking campaign, and will also give her continuing updates on the flushthetpp Feb 4th actions, President’s Week of in-district events, and how we all can hold them in our districts;

Emilianne Slaydon, TPP MediaMarch will enlighten and delight us with the Tuesday TPP Twitter Storm